


Catching the Light

by Senket



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-21
Updated: 2011-02-21
Packaged: 2017-11-15 15:08:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senket/pseuds/Senket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>  Lestrade was married, once. Mycroft never was. A ring don't have to mean just one thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catching the Light

**Author's Note:**

>   Trying my hand at Lestrade/Mycroft, which I find myself surprisingly attached to, not that I'm the only one clearly.

Once upon a time, Gregory Lestrade had been married. Her name had been Annabelle. She was tall and blonde, willowy, with small brown eyes and thin lips. She was a little plain if anyone wanted to be direct about it, but he’d never in his life cared. She had a brilliant smile and a tinkering laugh, and she liked to touch his elbow when he told bad jokes and kissed the corner of his mouth every morning over the smell of orange juice, and he loved her. She died six years into their marriage, quite suddenly, while he’d been chasing criminals in a completely different part of town. Car crash. Nothing to be done. It wasn’t at all his fault, but it took him years and three different therapists to erase his guilt.

He still wore the ring. No one ever asked, and he never told anyone. Some of them knew, he didn’t doubt that, but he also didn’t care. He missed her every day.

\----

Once upon a time, Mycroft Holmes bought a wedding ring at a high-class boutique on a trip to Marseille. He’d gotten it for his following trip to America, where he’d been slotted to meet with an official that took great stock in men having _families_. The shop attendant had seemed barely surprised at a man his age getting a single ring. Perhaps adulterous grooms often lost their meaningful jewelry in this part of the world.

How very quaintly French, he had thought, perhaps a little meanly.

He’d quite liked the look of it; or rather the way it stopped young ladies flocking to him, wanting a piece of the wealth his clothing and demeanour showed he must have.   


He still wore the ring, wore it on his right hand as a little symbol to the sexual interest that honestly had no real bearing on his life anyway, just for kicks. No one really noticed, and he didn’t really care. He wasn’t necessarily lonely. Well. He was busy, anyway.  
  
\-----  


“And how is your wife, Detective Inspector Lestrade?” the man asked, flexing his fingers against the curved, dark handle of his umbrella.

“Same as before,” Greg answered blandly, rubbing his fingers over short, silvering hair. “And your husband?”

“Oh, you know,” Mycroft answered with an artfully meaningful smile, tilting his head.

Lestrade nodded, tapping his pen once against the edge of his desk. “Yes. Well. You’ve come to gather Sherlock, of course.” He stood up in one move, pushing the usual paperwork over to the government official, jiggling the cell keys in his hand as he waited.

Mycroft plucked a weighted fountain pen from his breast pocket and signed the sheets with an unintelligible flourish, resting a folded cheque atop the documents. They moved together to fetch a younger man, lanky and pale, sweating from withdrawal with bruised eyes and chattering teeth. 

Neither of them ever lied to the other, not really. It was all a matter of translation.  
  
\----  


Gregory visited her three times a year: the anniversary of her birth, the anniversary of her death, and the anniversary of their marriage. Her parents were always there on the first. Her best friend was always there on the second. No one was ever there for the last.

Except last year, when a be-suited man with an umbrella and a chagrined frown had been waiting for him.

“Not now,” he’d said plaintively, tired and pained, laying a bouquet of chrysanthemums and carnations at her feet.

“I’m not here about my brother, Gregory.”

The detective exhaled raggedly, resting his forehead against cool granite. He struggled through a sigh when he felt a warm, firm hand lay over his shoulder, thumb pressed against his spine.  
  
\----  


“Shall I come?” Mycroft had asked the day before her birthday. At the time Lestrade had said no. Mycroft had still picked him up that morning, and the large black car had stayed just outside the cemetery while Lestrade commiserated with his in-laws.

On her death-day Lestrade had let the man come along, and Mycroft and Louise had engaged in some surprisingly awkward small talk while Greg rested against the tombstone, watching them with a distant expression.

Today, on their long-ago wedding day, Mycroft crowded around him, an arm wrapped about his shoulders from behind, the man a solid presence against his back.

Lestrade had no intention of getting married again, and Mycroft Holmes had no intention of ever getting married at all.

Labels were exhausting, anyway.

They never lied to anyone about the rings. It was all a matter of translation.


End file.
